Rattle His Bones

by Carola Dunn

  When she awoke, Daisy was sure she had not been dead to the world for more than a few minutes. She was still slouched in a leather armchair with a coat draped over her. No headache, thank heaven, but she felt decidedly lethargic.

  It was not only lassitude that kept her immobile, her eyes closed. If Detective Sergeant Tring knew she was awake, he might think he ought to send her from the room. With Tom Tring in charge of the case, she abandoned her attempt to curb her curiosity.

  Mummery’s strident outcry had roused her. (Had she dreamt it, or had she really referred to him as Flummery? Too shaming! She only hoped she could rely on Tring not to tell Alec she had been tiddly, and to silence Ross.) After that brief explosion, Mummery was now explaining, using a great many lengthy scientific terms, what he had been doing in the General Library after working hours. Come to think of it, Flummery suited him rather well. He sounded as if he was taking malicious delight in befuddling the poor uneducated coppers. Daisy wondered how the note-taking Ross was coping.

  Tom Tring was unruffled. After listening in massive silence until Mummery ran down like an underwound gramophone, the sergeant said politely, “Thank you, sir. It’s kind of you to take so much trouble to give me all the details when my Chief Inspector will likely be asking you to repeat it tomorrow. Very particular he is. Now, what time did you go to the library?”

  Mummery claimed to have been there from shortly before five until he burst forth to rebuke Daisy and Mrs.

  Ditchley for the singing. Several others were there when he arrived—he named a couple—but he thought all had left at half past five, at the end of the working day.

  “I cannot be certain,” he said condescendingly. “No doubt you are unaware, Sergeant, that academic libraries contain a great many tall bookshelves, which tend to conceal the occupants from one another.”

  “Is that so?” Tring spoke with such ponderous gravity that Daisy was sure he was amused. “Well, well, that’s a great pity, sir. Thank you, sir, that’s all then … for the moment.”

  “For the moment?” squawked Mummery.

  “Tonight, I’m just trying to get everyone’s movements clear, sir. You are at liberty to go home. Tomorrow, the Chief Inspector will no doubt have a number of questions to put to you, ’specially as Sergeant Jameson reports you threatened the victim.”

  “But he was already dead!”

  “Ah,” said Tring inscrutably. “Good night, sir.”

  There was a blank silence, then a mutter from Mummery, the sound of a chair pushed back, and a door opening and closing.

  “One up to you, Sarge,” Ross exclaimed. “But I didn’t get much of it down, the scientific stuff.”

  “That’s all right, laddie. It was mostly obfuscation”—Mr. Tring was by no means the ignoramus some took him for—“and I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking him to spell out the long words for you. The Chief'll sort him in the morning.”

  “You think the Super’ll give the case to Mr. Fletcher?”

  “Bound to, when he knows who’s got herself mixed up in it. Right, let’s have Mr. Witt in next.”

  Blushing, a tendency she deplored as positively Victorian but was unable to overcome, Daisy heard the door open and close again. To distract herself from Superintendent Crane’s probable reaction, not to mention Alec’s and, eventually and inevitably, the A. C.’s, she pondered Witt’s appearance on the list of suspects.

  “You can open your eyes now,” said Tom Tring.

  “Oh!” Daisy did. He had turned Sir Sidney’s swivel chair and was regarding her quizzically, in the shadowy corner where he had put her. “I didn’t want to interrupt your interview,” she excused herself.

  “Much obliged, I’m sure. Feeling better now?”

  “Yes, much, thanks.”

  “Ah.” He ruminated. “Still, I wouldn’t want to send you home alone, not after …”

  “Mr. Tring, you won’t tell the Chief?”

  Tring chuckled. “What, that his young lady was under the affluence of incohol, as they say oop north? When it was me poured the stuff into you? You don’t tell, I don’t tell. And I’ll keep young Ross mum, never fear. But what am I going to do with you now? I can’t spare a man to escort you.”

  “You could just leave me here,” said Daisy innocently. “I expect I’ll fall asleep again.”

  “Ho, pull the other one! All right, you know the place and you know at least some of the people. You can stay, if you swear not to tell the Chief I let you, and to keep your eyes and your mouth shut.”

  “Cross my heart and hope to be fossilized,” Daisy said, and closed her eyes just in time as the Director’s door opened.

  “Mr. Witt, Sergeant.”

  “Good evening, Sergeant.” Witt’s voice, smooth and well-bred, reminded Daisy of how helpful he had started out to be, and how he had had to pass her on to the equally helpful one-armed commissionaire assigned to his gallery.

  Sergeant Hamm—all these sergeants were getting confusing—ought to be able to confirm ffinch-Brown’s and Grand Duke Rudolf’s movements. If he himself had been where he was supposed to be. Could a man with one arm have inflicted the fatal wound on Pettigrew?

  Daisy realized she did not know exactly how the Keeper of Mineralogy had been killed. It was not a subject she cared to speculate about. She refocused her attention on Witt’s interview.

  “Yes, ffinch-Brown left my office at about twenty to six, perhaps a few minutes earlier. My office is at the back of the building, here.” Daisy pictured him leaning forward to point at Tring’s floor-plan.

  “I see, sir.”

  “You will observe, there are private studies behind the galleries, accessible through doors at the end of each gallery. Ffinch-Brown went out through the cephalopod gallery. I could have followed him to the reptile gallery and there met—er, the corpus delicti, shall we say?—in his pre-corpus state. However, I did not. I remained in my office, writing letters. Alone, alas.”

  “Sine alibi, as you might say, sir.”

  Witt laughed. “One might indeed, Sergeant.”

  “Very good, sir. Thank you for your cooperation. Chief Detective Inspector Fletcher will have some more questions for you tomorrow, I’m afraid.”

  “C’est la vie, Sergeant, or rather, c’est la mort.”

  The door opened and closed, then Ross said, “Cheerful sort of bloke, Sarge! I got your joke—sine alibi like sine die in a court adjournment, right? But I didn’t get that last bit of Latin down.”

  “French that was, but that’s all right, laddie. Fetch Mr. Steadman now, will you?” Tring paused while the constable departed, then said, “Well, Miss Dalrymple?”

  “A cheerful sort of bloke,” Daisy echoed the constable, “but he had good reason to dislike Pettigrew. They all did.”

  “Mr. Steadman too? No, you’d better go into that with the Chief.”

  “Right-oh,” Daisy sighed. “Who did you talk to while I was … out for the count?”

  Tring reached back for the list on the desk. “Mr. Chardford and Miss Fellowes.”

  “The young couple who were in the fossil mammals?”

  “That’s right. And another visitor, a bloke who claimed to be the Grand Duke of Transcarpathia, wherever that might be. Very offended because one of the constables accused him of lurking behind a giant deer, just because he didn’t rush out to see what was going on. Funny people, these foreigners. We’ll go into the visitors’ backgrounds, of course, but they’re just members of the public who happened to be here, like Mrs. Ditchley and her brood, no reason to connect them with the deceased.”

  “Oh, but there is! Grand Duke Rudolf—I’m pretty sure he really is—loathed Pettigrew.”

  “Did he, now?” Tring exclaimed. He made a note against the name. “You won’t forget to tell the Chief about him. Let’s see: There’s the commissionaires I’ve had a go at. They were all off chatting to each other, it being the end of the day and not too many visitors about.”

  “Sergeant Hamm was with
someone, not in the mammals?”

  “With Underwood and Boston in plants, corals, and sponges, if my memory serves.”

  “I’m sure it does, Mr. Tring.” If Underwood had done in the Keeper, Daisy thought, Boston and Hamm might conceivably give him a false alibi, considering Ol’ Stony’s behaviour towards the cripple. But a one-legged man was unlikely to attempt to tackle the hefty victim, and surely could not have got away before Daisy arrived on the scene.

  “Then there’s a couple of assistants, who were together the whole time in the work room behind the Geological Library. And Mr. Gilbert ffinch-Brown, two small f’s, from the British Museum, who went from Mr. Witt’s office straight through the … er, cephalopods, is it? and along through the reptiles to stare at a ground sloth in the east pavilion. No alibi and swears he didn’t see Mr. Pettigrew on the way. Peppery gentleman, like Mr. Mummery.”

  “Peppery’s just the word!” Daisy agreed. “Peppery Mummery—it sounds like a tongue-twister nursery rhyme. Anyone else?”

  “That’s all I’ve seen, and just three to go. Ah, here’s Mr. Steadman.”

  Daisy hastily resumed her feigned torpor as Ross ushered in the dinosaur man.

  “I was on my way home hours ago,” said Steadman crossly.

  “Yes, sir, I’m sorry we’ve had to keep you. Won’t you sit down? I hope you’ve managed to find something to fill the time.”

  “There’s always work to be done. I … I suppose you want to know where I was when … it happened.”

  “Exactly, sir,” said Tring affably, accustomed to putting nervous suspects at their ease, “if you’d be so kind.”

  “When … ?”

  “Let’s start from five o’clock.”

  “I was in the work room, looking at some bones I’ve been trying to classify. I’m the dinosaur curator, by the way. We often—usually, in fact—get incomplete skeletons, frequently of hitherto unknown species. Sometimes the discoverers misidentify other reptilian fossils as dinosauria, pure wishful thinking. I realized that was the case in this instance, at which point I decided to go home.”

  “What time would that be, sir?”

  “Time?” said Steadman vaguely, a slight tremor in his voice. “I couldn’t tell you exactly. I know it was after five thirty, because several assistants left the work room on the dot. The official work day ends at half past five, you know. I went through the Geological Library to the stairs and down to the staff cloakroom in the basement. That’s where we all keep our outdoor clothes, of course.”

  “Of course, sir. So you put on your coat and hat, two minutes, shall we say, or three.”

  “A little longer than that, I’m afraid. I was there for several minutes, er … hm …”

  “Answering the call of nature, sir?”

  “Yes, yes, that’s it,” Steadman said gratefully. Having heard him discourse freely on the disgusting eating habits of the Megalosaurus, Daisy was amused by his delicacy. “Then I went to the usual exit at the rear of the basement, where I found a police officer barring the way. I was horrified to learn of Dr. Pettigrew’s … death.” Again his voice shook.

  “A nasty business, sir, and a bit different from your dry old bones, eh? Well, that’ll be all, thank you.”

  “That’s all?”

  “For now, sir. My chief will have some questions for you tomorrow, I expect.”

  “Oh! Oh, I see. Yes. Well, I’ll be on my way, then.”

  “Good night, sir. If I were you, sir, I’d have a stiff drink when you get home, and put the whole thing out of your mind until the morning.” The door closed behind the squeamish dinosaur man. “Dr. Bentworth still asleep, Ross?” asked Tring.

  “Yes, Sarge, sweet as a baby.”

  “Leave him for last. I’ll take Mr. Ruddlestone next.”

  Daisy had a feeling something was wrong with the list of people Tring was interviewing, but she could not quite put her finger on it. She did know someone he had missed, though.

  As soon as Ross was gone, she asked, “What about the children, Mrs. Ditchley’s grandchildren? Are you going to talk to them tomorrow?”

  “That’s up to the Chief. Mrs. Ditchley told me you’d asked them if they saw anyone crossing the dinosaur gallery, which they hadn’t. Not much help there. It doesn’t incriminate Mr. Mummery, nor let him out, neither.”

  “No,” Daisy admitted.

  “You fancy Mr. Mummery for our villain, do you?” Tring enquired teasingly.

  “Gosh, no! Not more than the others, anyway. He has quite a temper, but as far as I know, he only had the same general reason to dislike Pettigrew. A running feud over the respective importance of palæontology and mineralogy hardly seems adequate cause for murder!”

  “You never can tell,” said the sergeant sagely. “Be about the same as a bloke doing in a nagging wife, or vice versa, I reckon. You’d be surprised how often they think that’s a reasonable excuse when trying to explain a corpse on the kitchen floor. ‘But Officer, he went on and on at me,’” he mimicked in a squeaky falsetto.

  Daisy swallowed a half-shocked giggle as Ross showed in Mr. Ruddlestone. Eyes shut, she pictured the two large, bald men confronting each other like a couple of boiled eggs on the breakfast table.

  “Sorry to keep you so late, sir,” said Tom Tring.

  “That’s quite all right, Sergeant.” Ruddlestone’s distinctly Lancashire voice sounded as if he was beaming his wide, jaunty beam, positively bubbling with enthusiasm. “I might well have stayed till now anyway. I found some fascinating stuff I hadn’t come across before.”

  “Where was that, sir?”

  “In the Special Palæontological Collections. That’s the stuff presented to the museum over the centuries by collectors like Sir Hans Sloane, Gustavus Brander, and William Smith. Most of the specimens are filed away in drawers, and one tends to forget they are there, but something drew my attention to … Oh, but you won’t want to hear about that. Here, I was here in this easternmost gallery.”

  “Thank you. From what time, sir?”

  “Time? It must have been about four. I had tea and a biscuit in my office. Several biscuits, to tell the truth, Sergeant,” Ruddlestone said confidentially, sharing amusement, one outsize man to another. “Then I went through to the special collections and I was still there, quite forgetful of the time, when a constable came and told me what had happened. He kindly let me stay there until just now. I’m more than ready for my dinner now, I can tell you, as I’m sure you must be.”

  “Ravenous!” Tring agreed. His eyes must be twinkling, Daisy would have bet on it. “Now, I see there are doors from this gallery here to the … let’s see … Fossil Plants, Corals, and Sponges, and to the reptiles.”

  “The reptile gallery is where it happened, isn’t it?” the invertebrate curator said, now grave. “It’s shocking to be so cheerful when a man lies dead, even a man like Pettigrew. But I have had such an invigorating evening.” His gravity already vanished, he spoke with a joyful earnestness. “Most people can’t see the fascination of corals and sponges, echinoderms, arthropods, mollusks, cephalopods, and so on, especially fossilized ones, but I assure you, when one really gets to know them they are quite wonderful.”

  “I’m sure they must be, sir. A bit like police work—lots of people can’t see why anyone’d want to do it.”

  “Exactly! You are an expert in your field as I in mine. As an expert, you take the same pleasure in your business as I take in the study of invertebrates. On the scale of mere mass, dinosaurs outweigh them, to be sure, but only look at age, numbers, and diversity! Invertebrates came first, and there have always been far more of them than of vertebrates, both in numbers of species and in numbers of individuals. Where would we be without earthworms, I ask you?”

  “I, er, couldn’t say, sir,” Tring admitted.

  Ruddlestone laughed. “An unfair question, and rhetorical, I assure you. But you must have questions for me. I am holding up your investigation. I ought to have warned you not to let me mount my hob
by-horse, Sergeant.”

  “It’s been very interesting, sir. Given me a bit of an eye-opener, you might say. You didn’t set foot outside that gallery after you went in, sir?”

  “Not until one of your officers came and told me what had happened. Poor Pettigrew, he was his own worst enemy. I don’t know about his private life, but in his professional life he succeeded in alienating one and all.”

  “Ah,” said Tring. “Well, Detective Chief Inspector Fletcher will want to hear all about that tomorrow, sir, but for now, I’m done, thank you. I’ll warn the Chief to keep you off your hobby-horse, sir.”

  “Do that, Sergeant!” Ruddlestone laughed again. “Good night to you, and I hope you get your dinner soon.”

  Her eyes still shut, Daisy noted that, whatever their similarity of build, his departing tread had none of Tring’s lightfootedness.

  “A nice gentleman, Sarge,” was Ross’s verdict, “shaking your hand and all.”

  “So he seemed, laddie, so he seemed, but if you want to get on in our business, it doesn’t do to judge a book by its cover.” Tring heaved a heavy sigh. “All that talk of dinner, and the missus was making steak and kidney pud tonight. It’s not the same warmed over. Still, finishing up Miss Dalrymple’s whisky seems to have cleared the tubes and knocked my cold for six. All right, let’s have Dr. Bentworth in.”

  “So that’s what happened to the rest of the whisky,” said Daisy tartly, hearing the door close.

  “Waste not, want not,” Tring responded in a mock sententious tone, which switched to injured as he continued, “I couldn’t very well put it back into Sir Sidney’s decanter, could I? Young Ross poured with a heavy hand, like it was beer.”

  “I’m glad it’s cured your cold, if only temporarily. Gosh, I could do with some of Mrs. Tring’s steak and kidney pud! I only got one biscuit with my tea.”

  “You can leave if you want. You sound compos mentis enough now to get yourself home.”

  “You are making a parade of your Latin today!” Daisy teased. “No, I’ll stay, though I’ll be very surprised if you get anything useful out of Dr. Bentworth.”

  “Oh?”

  “Wait and see. Here they come.”